CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

FBH / Vega

Frontier Behavioral Health (FBH) is a nonprofit Trauma-Informed Care organization, providing mental healthcare and related services primarily in the greater Spokane area of Washington, as well as several other locations. Alongside services for both outpatient and inpatient clients, FBH also has several mobile staff deployed for community outreach. To enable mobile teams, FBH uses Vega Cloud’s Secure WorkRemote solution, of which HP Anyware is an integral part.

Enabling a Healthcare Organization to Deploy Hybrid and Field Users Frontier Behavioral Health Secures Sensitive Field Data using Vega Cloud’s Secure WorkRemote, Powered by HP Anyware

INDUSTRY: Healthcare

COUNTRY: USA

“The security of the Secure WorkRemote and HP Anyware offering was very compelling because the data stays in one place. The PC-over-IP component, which is basically sending encrypted image pixels back and forth, provides a greater level of security for us. And it narrows the amount of bandwidth required for the end user device to have a responsive experience” Paul Arguinchona, Chief Information Officer at Frontier Behavioral Health

2FBH / Vega

“We were looking for technology with which we could build a more secure interface between the remote worker and the cloud environment. We also saw a need for technology that was low bandwidth-friendly. That was a great opportunity for us to leverage PCoIP, so that we weren’t transferring data back and forth over VPN or other solutions that were slower or maybe less secure,”

Kris Bliesner, CEO, Vega Cloud

Objectives • Enable field-based staff to securely access devices from wherever

they are

• Reduce cybersecurity attacks by protecting sensitive client data

Approach • Implement Vega Cloud’s Secure WorkRemote, which uses HP

Anyware’s PCoIP® (PC-over-IP) protocol, to keep data secure in the data center

• Equipping field workers with portable Chromebooks and moving the data center to AWS cloud infrastructure

Business Outcomes • Enabled mental health practitioners to reach clients in the field in

Spokane County

• Improved security for field workers resulting in no significant security threats

• Reduced workload for IT support staff as well as setup time for new users

19 locations

0 significant security incidents

Nonprofit trauma-informed care organization

3

Solution at a glance

FBH / Vega

Objectives Protecting data while enabling workers in the field

Frontier Behavioral Health have adopted a hybrid working model. Some employees come into the office and use on-premises workstations but FBH also deploys a number of mental health clinical professionals in the field for meeting clients in different areas of greater Spokane County. These users working outside in the community access the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. With this mix of infrastructure, Chief Information Officer of Frontier Behavioral Health, Paul Arguinchona had his work cut out for him overseeing information technology and information security components.

In this hybrid environment, FBH had one pressing need—providing lightweight devices to end users who would primarily be field-based. Currently, FBH field teams carry laptops equipped with software and accessories that cost $3000 per user. As Arguinchona explained, “they do a fairly good job of taking care of them, but they have been stolen, they get dropped, things break”. Keeping costs low became imperative.

But there was yet another issue that FBH field users were facing. The Spokane region that they were working in has a large amount of basalt rock, which hampers wireless signals and bandwidth.

The ideal solution for FBH would be investing in less expensive equipment and a remote access solution that worked with lower bandwidth, while still providing the responsiveness and security that users required on the go.

Approach Empowering field workers with Secure WorkRemote and HP Anyware

Kris Bliesner, CEO of Vega Cloud, helps support customers and makes sure that projects and technology are delivered on time. Vega Cloud builds public cloud optimization solutions that keep customers’ data secure while they work remotely. Vega Cloud also optimizes the product to be less expensive. The Vega Cloud solution that FBH has been employing is Secure WorkRemote (SWR), a Desktop-as-a-Service application built with zero-trust architecture, and HP Anyware is a major component of the software.

“HP Anyware is a key part of the Secure WorkRemote solution,” elucidated Bliesner. “We use it specifically for data transfer between the centralized cloud environment and the remote workstation, wherever that might be.” HP Anyware offers secured access to any mix of workstations, on-prem data centers, edge, private or public clouds from

Software

- Vega Cloud Secure WorkRemote, powered by HP Anyware

Hardware

- Chromebooks

- On-prem workstations

Cloud Service Provider

- Amazon Web Services (AWS)

4FBH / Vega

virtually any end user device. For Vega Cloud, Bliesner said, it doesn’t matter where the user is coming from or where they are located, the company wants to ensure that there’s no data sitting on the user’s device or getting transferred between endpoints.

Vega Cloud had trialed a few other remote access software options before deciding on HP Anyware for the Secure WorkRemote solution. Alongside searching for software that would be responsive even at a low bandwidth, while maintaining a high-level of security, Vega Cloud also wanted to avoid the use of a Virtual Private Network in the solution stack they created. The PCoIP protocol that HP Anyware is built on doesn’t require VPNs, offers high security and works with low bandwidth. Users don’t have to transfer large files or download large datasets one at a time. All that data remains in the data center, whether it’s located on the cloud or on-prem. This was the solution that Secure WorkRemote could be partnered with. Vega Cloud has embarked on a global strategic collaboration with HP Teradici for the next generation of hybrid digital workspace performance and security.

Which is why, when Brandon Tanner, Executive Vice-President of Business Development at Vega Cloud, reached out to Arguinchona about how Secure WorkRemote and HP Anyware would resolve FBH’s security and bandwidth issues, FBH decided to roll out the solution to a select few field workers.

For Frontier Behavioral Health, keeping costs down started with choosing the right equipment. The organization began deploying field teams with Chromebooks, which are lightweight and easy to replace. With the HP Anyware-powered Secure WorkRemote, end users were able to access company data on the move without utilizing as much bandwidth as the devices did before. The responsiveness of PCoIP also made it easier for users to access their systems in the field.

PCoIP also offers a high level of security for a company like FBH, whose client data is particularly attractive to bad actors. Since PCoIP only transmits AES 256-encrypted image pixels from a host device to a client device, instead of raw data, and doesn’t require any data or files to be saved on a local system, it greatly reduces the chances of cybersecurity attacks.

For additional security, Vega Cloud added auto-start and auto-stop features, as well as dynamic whitelisting of IP addresses. Bliesner shared the philosophy behind these features. “When the pandemic pushed everybody remote, we saw cybercrime increase exponentially. And that was really bad for businesses because it was impacting folks, whether they got ransomware or had security incidents.” Tanner explained that these features were largely required because field workers for companies like FBH often found themselves working in coffee shops or areas with communal Wi-Fi networks. “Those are super

“If someone clicks in the virtual world, we’re able to contain the blast radius”

Brandon Tanner, Executive Vice-President of Business Development

insecure. And so, part of the strategy with Secure WorkRemote was to add in some other security layers on top of PCoIP,” said Tanner, adding “the safest machine is the machine that’s turned off and inaccessible”.

Dynamic whitelisting works on the firewall side and ensures that the solution always checks who the user is, whether it’s the authorized user that’s coming through the multi-factor authentication steps and that only that user has access to the solution. This addition has helped Vega Cloud deliver on their promises to make their solution as secure as possible.

Alongside using HP Anyware, Vega Cloud has also built a Zero Trust network into their solution. “Zero trust is the concept of least privilege. There’s no trust between the workstations. So, if an individual workstation is compromised, it doesn’t impact anybody else,” said Bliesner. Tanner added that Vega Cloud designed Secure WorkRemote assuming compromise. “Our assumption is that the device is going to have malware on it and be infected, or be lost or stolen.” With the Zero Trust network, “if someone clicks in the virtual world, we’re able to contain the blast radius.”

Business Outcomes Equipped field workers with secure access to company data

When asked to share anecdotes about using HP Anyware, Arguinchona had this to say: “it’s kind of funny. The anecdote I can share is ‘no news is good news’.” As CIO, Arguinchona doesn’t hear about the positives of the tech solutions FBH uses; he only ever hears about problems and then he gets to work on solutions. “I don’t hear about problems with the Secure WorkRemote solution.” And that is a very good thing.

Alongside field workers being able to securely access data in low- bandwidth regions, there were other benefits that Arguinchona highlighted. “Once the user account is set up, deployment is very easy, it eliminates a significant workload off of our internal support staff.” Whereas before the deployment of Secure WorkRemote, if a user lost a laptop, they would have to go through multiple steps to be ready to deploy again. A new laptop would need to be procured, set up, with their specific configuration needs, and only then could they be deployed.

“Now, in a situation where we’re utilizing Chromebooks, if something happens, a Chromebook gets damaged, lost, misplaced, whatever, the end user comes in to the help desk, hands them a Chromebook, they sign in, and they’re good to go.” This new process saves the user a lot of time so they can get back to work much faster.

Faster deployment and onboarding of field practitioners

Equipped field workers with cloud-accessible laptops

Significantly decreased risk of cyberattacks

5FBH / Vega

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But it also saves the support team time and energy because the setup needs less work, and the environment remains the same no matter what device the user is on. FBH had been looking for ways to minimize the cost of IT and support labor while still having those teams be available 24/7. With the speed of setup and device replacement improving, Arguinchona was relieved to share that he “can actually give some of my staff time off on occasion.”

Speaking again about bandwidth, Arguinchona added that “we can really tune the amount of processing capability and storage capability we need on these individual PCoIP workstations for our users and we don’t need to spend extra money on computing resources when they’re really not necessary. So, that’s another feature that, in the long run, will benefit us from a from a financial standpoint.”

FBH are now looking to the future, to rolling out Secure WorkRemote to more field workers alongside a fleet of Chromebooks. For Vega Cloud, they’re looking forward to continuing the HP Teradici partnership. “The partnership with HP Anyware, it’s been fantastic for us. The group has been very supportive, if we’ve had any issues or need help on the development side. And so, we’re really looking forward to continuing to grow a very nice business together as we continue to grow our product offerings,” concluded Bliesner.

Learn more at hp.com/anyware

“I don’t hear about problems with the Secure WorkRemote solution”

Paul Arguinchona, Chief Information Officer of Frontier Behavioral Health